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I went to the Made in Hawaii festival at the Blaisdell today. The point of the festival is to promote people and businesses that make things locally. If I were a tourist checking out the Made in Hawaii festival, I would have just one observation to pass along to the folks back home in Nebraska¹:

“Those Hawaiians sure like bath oils and floral print.”

There’s more to Hawaii than pikake-scented soap and koa clocks, and I know there isn’t a shortage of creative, outside-the-box thinkers in Hawaii. However, there also isn’t a shortage of people that think they have smart, fresh ideas for businesses, which are really just rehashes of someone else’s smart, fresh ideas. Example: one booth sold Ainoshea² shirts— a blatant parody of the Ainokea³ clothing line… except, they weren’t affiliated with Ainokea⁴. There were large stacks of these Ainoshea shirts at the booth, but no buyers. In other words, somebody invested hundreds of dollars in a shirt brand whose sole existence is to parody another shirt brand, whose own popularity is actually on the decline. In 6 months, you’re gonna see a spike in people wearing Ainoshea shirts, when they’re forced to just give them all away because the self-storage rent is too high. My point is, if you’re gonna cherrypick off of someone else’s popularity, at least choose wisely.

There were hundreds of vendors, yet I kept seeing the same 10 products. The Blaisdell Exhibition Hall is 65,000 square feet⁵, but for the amount of actual original ideas, they coulda used a high school cafeteria. Don’t get me wrong, all the exhibitors were selling quality stuff, and could undoubtedly move a serious amount of product in the mainland and other places hibiscuses aren’t commonly found. They just weren’t ORIGINAL. I think lot of the vendors were coming to this conclusion right in front of my eyes. There were a number of booths occupied only by the sellers themselves, who seemed disinterested, playing on their phones and staring out across the aisle at their rival bath-and-body brand’s booth⁶. There wasn’t a lack of potential customers. The festival itself was a packed affair. I had to park two blocks away. And the aisles in the exhibition hall were stuffed with window shoppers inching along from booth to booth. But there was a relative smattering of people that actually stopped. Because in the first 5 minutes of being there, you had already seen it all.

There were some standout booths. For example, dog clothes⁷.

And there was an Indian curry booth⁸. Locally made Indian curry! Because there is no rule stating all locally made food has to have some kind of passion fruit in it, and these guys seem to be the only ones who know. And judging from the traffic surrounding these two booths, their curveballs amidst the gold-labeled cellophane-wrapped jars of rice crackers and racks upon racks of “tribal”-design shirts was a welcome change of pace.

For each and every vendor at the festival to make it to this stage is proof that they truly believe in their product, original or not. It is obvious that they are all driven to succeed at what they do, and to take whatever it is they’re marketing to another level. That dedication is highly respectable, and they deserve to be paid off for it. But there is a lesson to learn in coming face-to-face with 10 of your clone competitors and sitting in a jail-sized booth for 8 hours to end up selling 5 t-shirts, and I hope it isn’t a discouraging one. The lesson should be that it’s not only okay to be different and take risks, you NEED to be; especially on a little island full of potential entrepreneurs, where you only really need one brand of lilikoi conditioner. Of course, I could be wrong. Perhaps Hawaii and its forests are big enough for 2 (or 10) koa clock makers, and each can get an equal sliver of the pie. After all, going with the flow is always a sure bet. BUT… if you can stand out, and do things no one else has thought of, or is even incapable of doing, that’s when you get to keep the whole pie to yourself. THAT’S when you’re in business.

¹Sure. I’d be from Nebraska, I guess.

²For my Nebraska family, that’s “I don’t share” in pidgin English.

³”I don’t care.”

⁴Ainokea actually had their own booth at the festival. Awkward.

⁵Wikipedia article on Neal Blaisdell Center, because I cite my sources.

⁶Also empty.

⁷Fauna Collection - pet apparel (a.k.a. dog clothes)

⁸www.indiacafehawaii.com